Wednesday, November 16, 2005

HELECOPTERS PROTECTING OUR RIGHT TO DISSENT.


My two bit bitch it session - with choppers churning real load outside... Pissing me right off...
READ ON...
Isn’t it funny how the word decent, is so similar to this word dissent?

Perhaps it’s just me but can anybody else see the connection?

Perhaps dissenting from the established rule of things means there is ONLY one way to GO - being DECENT?!

In a weird kind of way, sometimes I think, it is beautiful living in Darlinghurst. There is, between the cracks, within the shadows, remnant ghosts, of its former bohemian, creative and diverse past. Ghosts barely hanging on, for their dear life.

Affectionately titled by locals and “visitors in the know” alike, DARLING-IT-HURTS, survives more on a wild and thought provoking reputation than by a wild and thought provoking creative reality these days. Darling-it-hurts is fast becoming a clean cut, renovated and time conscious community. For better or for worse. These days, the locals now work in the occasionally respectable professions of advertising, public relations, publishing, TV production, graphic/web design, corporate accounting, CEO management skills development and venture capitalism. This is a small cross section of my friends and acquaintances’ chosen professions. There is though, still a splattering of actors, photographers, taxi drivers, hospitality workers, and the all too too, far and few between, professional screen or playwright and those aspiring to such heights. Also to be found, those who are probably responsible for her nick names sake – although, almost driven out, are the sex workers (a suitable euphemism for prostitute) and very occasionally, their well mannered minders (a very PC euphemism for pimps.)

We all deserve some respect afterall.

And ahhh yes, the girls drivers, ( like everything else in Darling-it-hurts, you can get sex home delivered to!) Oh, and drug dealers, let’s not forget the wonderful service they can provide, when it's available… Or so I've been told...

But what I really love about living and working in dear old Darlinghurst 2010, is not the 24 hours 7 days a week watering holes. Or the plethora of alternatively and multiply sexed homo sapiens’, (Darlo is after all the biggest gay and lesbian ghetto in the Southern Hemisphere), or the busiest bustling late night streets, by far in the entire country. No, not at all!

I say, what I really troooly love about the old girl, must be the continuous noise of police helicopters “protecting??” thousands of industrial relations protesters who have the self conviction and courage to take to the CBD streets in an attempt to protect their lively-hoods, from quick and indiscriminate dismissal and shocking work conditions, under Johnny's Australia, just this morning...

Can you hear them right now? If not, you mustn’t be living in Darlo.

“How dare they protest, hey?”

“Especially in this world climate of fear and terrorism!”

The many and visible NSW police force members in the area, have long used “the veiled (or not so veiled) threat” of arrest, (which they do go through with, don’t worry about that), as a form of regulating the good citizens from their more controversial behavior in it’s many and varied forms. I find it somewhat unnerving, to see two or three police choppers hovering overhead in surveillance or tactical maneuvers and like always these days, during civil protest. Or am I to feel safer for their presence?

The choppers, together with the armed, shielded and battened officers on the ground, including the mounted horse officers’, conducting seemingly random arrests of those who act slightly out of the ordinary, serve as a rather strong deterrent to those who may want to protest. Looking out over my balcony, it is somewhat reminiscent of the Directors cut of “Apocalypse Now.”

"What a beautiful day!"

“Let it be known! Bring on the water cannons and tear gas!!”

So thank-you, for keeping my senses on alert this morning, the view of your skilful maneuvering in your flying mobiles is quite gratifying and warming to my heart and soul. Better still, I look forward to the next run of F-18 fighter pilots in formation overhead, always beautifully displayed on Australia day and ironically after a new terrorist attack in Bali. God bless. The air forces F-18’s were particularly impressive immediately after that equally engrossing S11 incident a few years back. Nothing like a bit of broken sound barrier, low overhead in a city, to let you know who’s boss! I’m going for my heavy duty ear plugs, thank-you and remember, GOD SAVE OUR QUEEN!!

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